[dev] Usable typesetting system?

Hi everyone,

  I wrote my bachelor thesis using LaTeX and now I am going to write my
master thesis. I would rather avoid TeX and everything TeX based this time.

The PDF output of (La)TeX is awesome and I really like that part of it, but
writting itself was painful, since the language is pretty cryptic and complex
for 'simple document like thesis'. Overhelming compilation output completely
hides any warnings and errors, which are too fuzzy and useless anyway. Also,
work with images is pretty much impossible and texlive package is too big in
size.

I am currently looking for some replacement with:

* input as plain text (NOT xml)
* simple syntax/commands/language
* output as PDF (acceptable as thesis), may be indirectly
* usable compilator (readable overall output, warnings and errors)
* overall good design

I guess my demands are too high, but if you know about something interesting,
please, let me know.

Thank you,
  dum8d0g